NATURE sets a limit on human
suffering. Any physician who
ministers to the mentally ill is
familiar with the way in which
the mind is removed from the world of
pain and reality just as soon as a per
son reaches that limit where he literally
just “cah’t take it.”
A flight from reality, the physician
calls it.
When Mrs. Helen Wills Love, faced
with the appalling prospect of being
sentenced for the killing of her husband
last New Year’s Eve, announced that
she would die and followed up her
prophecy by going into a coma that
lasted something like a week, physi
cians wondered whether her uncon
sciousness was this sort of flight from
reality. Her revival from the coma was
followed by an inquiry into her sanity.
That it is actually possible for some
persons to lay themselves down and die
without resorting to poison or any
An Indian fakir entertaining a crowd at Delhi by stalking about on a bed
of live coals . . . another example of the way in which the mind can
dominate the body.
weapon was attested to by Dr. A. A.
Brill, New York psychiatrist, in a re
port at a recent meeting of the Amer
ican Anthropological Association.
The ordinary would-be suicide is usu
ally prevented from going through with
his intention by a strong will to live
which overpowers the less strong desire
to be through with life. Invariably,
conflict occurs in the person’s mind, a
tense, often deadly combat. In order to
cut the strong tie that holds him to life,
he must resort to violence.
Not so the unfortunate person who
lacks the will to live. For him no vio
lent method is needed.
“Psychic suicide” is the scientific
name thal Dr Brill has applied to such
By Marjorie Van de Water
death by wishing.
It is not common among civilized peo
ple. Dr. Brill said. Civilized man is too
well surrounded with luxury to want to
leave life. The civilized man's sense of
responsibility is another motive.
f’HILDREN and primitive people die
more easily. Dr. Brill tells us. They
are more loosely tied to life.
When young boys and girls commit
suicide, the act is not preceded by the
long emotional struggle that may be ob
served in adults.
‘‘lt seems that the younger the person
A Sadoo or holy
man of India
(right), reclining
on his bed of nails
. . . a sample of
“mind over body.”
the less hold life has on him, and com
petent observers have reported that
young children die very easily when
confronted with death,” Dr. Brill ex
plains.
So it is also with primitive people.
Explorers have long ago brought back
to civilization tales of aborigines in dif
ferent parts of the world who could
make up their minds to die. and then
simply lie down and pass out.
Now unimpeachable scientific and
medical evidence has convinced Dr.
Brill of the accuracy of these reports.
Healthy primitive people, even after
they have lived for some time in a
state of civilization, have this power to
lay them down and die.
It may start with brooding over ab
sent or dead relatives, fear of the fu
ture or disappointment in love. The
grieving individual will become ill.
Physicians examining him cannot find
any organic trouble to account for the
illness. After a few days death comes.
The illness in such a case seldom lasts
long: death quickly follows. No lengthy
coma such as that of Mrs. Love pre
cedes the end. Some ethnologists feel
that it is fright that stops the beating
of the heart —fright due to the super
stitions of the primitive or their awe of
the malign power of the medicine man.
Among civilized people having a
much stronger attachment to life, deaths
by will are very rare, and may take
months or years to accomplish. Dr. Brill
said. Yet he has had cases among his
own practice where he could ascribe
death to no other cause.
OSYCHIC suicide, as indeed all sui
* cides, are caused, Dr. Brill tells us,
by hatred or anger and a desire for re
venge, by loss of love or the love ob
ject, or because of fear.
The little child who whimpers “You’ll
be sorry when I die," is expressing sim
ply in a childish way the motive of the
first class of suicides. The boy who re
acts to his father’s scolding or the
teacher’s by an attempt on his own life
Helen Wills Love awakening In the
Los Angeles county jail from the coma
into which she passed after she had
been convicted of killing her husband.
may be making a foolish effort to “get
even.”
The love suicides are familiar to all
of us. Daily the newspapers publish ac
counts of some lover’s suicide. Yet
psychiatrists know that it is not love
that makes a man turn a gun against
his heart; it is loss of love.
A psychiatrist has said that the sui
cide is a person who loves no one but
himself. Os the psychic suicides ob
served by Dr. Brill, every one was a
person who had no attachments to
others. Perhaps they loved but one
person and then lost that love. Always
the love was restricted and confined.
Fear in a broad sense is the third
motivating cause of suicides listed by
Dr. Brill.
In the beginning of life, Dr. Brill ex
plains, every animal—dog and horse
and man alike —loves only the mother.
All the outside world, including the
father, is met with fear.
As the’ child grows older, the father
becomes the symbol of authority, pro
hibition and hence a kind of fear or
anxiety. The way in which the civil
ized child meets this situation is by
trying to become “father” himself. He
tries to walk like him, to act like him,
and, much to the distress of mothers,
to smoke and swear like him. In time
he tells himself the things hi 3 father
might say. and this, psychiatrists tell
us, is the still small voice of conscience.
They call it the “super-ego.”
Always there is a struggle in humans
between the voice of conscience or duty,
this precipitate of the father, and the
voice of love and comfort and security
which is the precipitate of the mother.
Moods depend upon which voice rises
to crescendo, and which is lost in the
other. Those who are mentally ill and
listen to the reproaches of conscience
too much may be driven by it to suicide.